MARKET VERSUS MERITOCRACY: HUNGARY AS A CRITICAL CASE

Erzsébet Bukodi and John H Goldthorpe

DRAFT: November 2008 Please do not cite or quote without permission. Comments welcome.

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Introduction Michael Young introduced the idea of ‘meritocracy’ in his celebrated dystopian

fantasy, The Rise of the Meritocracy, of 1958. Young meant his fantasy to serve

as a warning. If merit, defined as ‘IQ plus effort’ and certified through educational

attainment, were to become the basis of social stratification, then those who

fared badly would be seen, and might well see themselves, as simply undeserving.

Or, as he later put it, if merit is all-important, then those judged as having none

are left ‘morally naked’ (Young, 2001).

Young’s book was a notable success and, in Britain at least, his warning was well

understood. Remarkably, though, in the United States, the idea of meritocracy

was rather quickly removed from the satirical and critical context of Young’s work

and became used in an essentially positive sense. This transvaluation of the

concept has to be attributed primarily to its adoption, during the 1970s, by a

group of American ‘cold-war liberals’, among whom Daniel Bell was pre-eminent.

For these intellectuals, the attraction of the idea of meritocracy was that it

provided a basis for countering egalitarian arguments of a kind they regarded as

unduly ‘socialistic’: that is, arguments, often made under the inspiration of John

Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971), in favour of greater equality of outcomes as

well as of opportunities. Bell and his associates maintained that if a high degree of

equality of opportunity could be established, and especially of educational

opportunity, and if social selection became based primarily on educational

attainment, then a wide range of inequalities of outcome, in incomes, wealth and

status etc., could be defended. These inequalities of outcome would reflect the

differing levels of reward that individuals obtained - and indeed deserved or

‘merited’ - in return for their efforts in securing educational qualifications and

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applying these productively in their working lives (see esp. Bell, 1972: 53-9;

1973: 440-55).

Moreover, Bell and his associates could claim support for their affirmative

reinterpretation of meritocracy from within the mainstream American sociology of

the day: in particular, from functionalist theories of industrialism or modernisation

and from ‘status attainment’ research (for a crucial linking paper, see Treiman,

1970). They could draw on these sources to argue that increasing equality of

educational opportunity and an increasingly dominant role for education in social

selection were not only desirable processes of change, but ones actually in train

and reflecting in fact functional imperatives of all modern societies. The

technological and economic dynamism of such societies made it essential that all

available human resources should be exploited as fully as possible, and

progressive educational expansion and reform were essential to meet this

requirement. In turn, employing organisations were compelled, in the interests of

their own efficiency, to give prime importance to educated and qualified talent in

their recruitment and promotion policies. As Bell summed up (1972: 30; cf. 1973:

454), ‘The post-industrial society is, in its logic, a meritocracy’.

Subsequently, the positive conception of meritocracy, resulting from the American

reception of Young’s work, has gained wide political currency, returning from

America to Europe and now often featuring as a key element in the ideology of

parties of both the centre-left and centre-right. At the same time, though, the idea

of meritocracy has been subject to often highly critical assessment by social and

political philosophers (see e.g. Barry, 2005), while among social scientists

extensive debates have occurred, and continue, in course of which the

emergence, or even the viability, of education-based meritocracy has been called

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into question on empirical grounds (see e.g. Arrow, Bowles and Durlauf, eds.,

2000; Bowles, Gintis and Osborne Groves eds., 2005; Goldthorpe and Jackson,

2008).

In the present paper, we aim to make a further contribution to these debates that

is distinctive in two respects. First, we counterpose to the American liberal

argument that modern societies are ‘in their logic’ meritocracies a sharply

contrasting argument, deriving from the classic European liberal tradition. This

holds that a ‘free market’ economy - i.e. one operating within a liberal form of

society - is not in fact compatible with meritocracy. And then, second, we

consider a particular national society, that of Hungary, which, we believe,

represents a critical case for the empirical evaluation of these two arguments.

Market versus meritocracy

The claim that an incompatibility exists, in both principle and practice, between a

free market economy and any form of meritocracy is developed most rigorously in

the work of Friedrich Hayek (see esp. 1960: chs. 5, 6 and 24; 1976: ch. 9).

Hayek is ready to endorse the idea of la carrière ouverte aux talents - but with the

proviso that talent is often formed by socially privileged backgrounds and indeed

that some types of ability may be the distinctive product of such backgrounds. He

also stresses that in a liberal society limits must exist to the extent to which

economic inequalities, as generated by the market, can be reduced, and to the

extent to which more advantaged families can be prevented from passing on their

advantages, whether economic, social or cultural, from one generation to another.

Thus, in such a society, the idea of equality of educational opportunity is

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inevitably problematic. Some association between children’s class backgrounds

and their educational attainment is always likely to prevail.

Moreover, Hayek insists that there are no objective criteria by reference to which

merit can be established - nor, therefore, any objective means of rewarding

individuals according to their merit. In particular, he rejects the functionalist view

that rewards can in some way be calibrated in relation to the ‘value to society’ of

different kinds of employment or occupation. For Hayek, economic activities and

the goods and services that result from them can have value only for individuals -

or for organisations with well-defined goals; and this value will be indexed simply

by the prices that particular goods and services can command. In other words, in

a market economy the rewards that individuals receive do not depend on their

merits, as they or others may see them, but only on the value of what each

individual has to offer on the market.

Consistently with this position, Hayek accepts that in a market economy

individuals will often appear to be unfairly treated. Genuine talent and effort may

be ill-rewarded while opportunism or sheer luck bring large returns. But the case

for such an economy does not rest on the creation of social justice. It rests on the

way in which it maximises economic efficiency and, still more importantly,

underwrites individual freedom. Conversely, then, any attempt at meritocracy

must, for Hayek, pose a threat to both efficiency and freedom. For if judgments of

merit are made, and determine access to different kinds of employment and in

turn rewards, this can only be done through some kind of arbitrary, external

intervention in the working of the market.

Hayek is in fact forced to acknowledge that where, as in modern societies, the

large majority of the economically active population do not work on their own

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account but are employees, such intervention is in effect continuously made by

employers: that is, through their decisions about whom to recruit, retain, promote,

discharge etc. But, he argues (1960: 99), ‘so long as a multiplicity of

organisations compete with each other’ in this respect - i.e. apply differing criteria

of selection - ‘this is not merely compatible with freedom but extends the range of

choice open to the individual’. In contrast, what must necessarily undermine both

efficiency and freedom is ‘a situation in which a single comprehensive scale of

merit is imposed upon the whole society’ - whether a scale based on educational

qualifications or any other criterion. For such a situation would only be possible

under an entirely authoritarian political regime operating in effect some form of

‘command’ economy.

From a Hayekian standpoint, the most obvious examples of both the conditions

for and consequences of meritocracy must then be those provided by the state

socialist societies of the post-war Soviet bloc - which Hayek openly criticised on

grounds of their economic inefficiency and political unfreedom alike. It is, at all

events, these societies that on empirical grounds, can be taken as representing

the most fully developed form of meritocracy, of an education-based kind, that

has so far been realised - and even with due allowance being made for the various

non-meritocratic privileges that were enjoyed by the families of the nomenklatura.1

In state socialist societies, educational provision was in all cases expanded and in

most serious efforts were made to create a greater equality of educational

opportunity, especially to the advantage of children of working-class and peasant

backgrounds. At the same time, the educational system was used as a prime

instrument of manpower planning and allocation. Research undertaken in these

societies indicates that some reduction in inequalities in the educational

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attainment of children of differing class origins was in fact often achieved, while

especially strong linkages between individuals’ qualifications and their class

destinations - stronger than those generally found in western capitalist societies -

were established.2

In consequence, then, of the dramatic regime changes that previously state

socialist societies experienced in the years 1988-90, followed, in a number of

cases, by the rapid introduction of relatively free market economies, a unique

research opportunity arises for the further investigation of the sociological issues

that were outlined above. We have in effect a kind of natural experiment by

means of which the argument that a steady movement towards an education-

based meritocracy is a functional imperative of all modern societies can be

empirically tested against the rival argument that the new market economies of

these societies will in various respects be inimical to such a development. We aim

to exploit this opportunity by an examination of the Hungarian case, which, we

believe, affords a number of distinctive advantages.

The Hungarian case

There are at least three features of this case that make it a critical one, given the

nature of our interests.

First, after the takeover of power by the Hungarian Communist Party in 1949, the

policies that were pursued with the aim of increasing equality of educational

opportunity would appear to have been yet more radical and determined than

those adopted in most other state socialist societies (Simkus and Andorka, 1982;

Szelényi and Aschaffenburg, 1993). A major expansion and restructuring of

secondary education was carried through, extensive provision was made for adult

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education, all school and university fees were abolished, and bursaries and various

forms of support in kind (e.g. subsidised canteens and dormitories) were

established in order to help children from poorer families to continue in education

beyond the new minimum period of eight years. In addition, from the early 1950s

through to the 1970s a ‘quota system’ was in operation under which secondary

schools and universities were required to fill at least half their places with

students from working-class or peasant backgrounds, while students who were

deemed to come from the former gentry or bourgeoisie were given lowest priority

for university admission - although how far such ‘negative discrimination’ was

effective is much debated (cp. Simkus and Andorka, 1982; Róbert, 1991; Hanley

and McKeever, 1997; Szelényi, 1998: chs. 1, 7). Informing all these policies was

a quite explicit Party view that the reform of the educational system, leading to

wider opportunities, the maximum exploitation of talent and a new social

distribution of knowledge, would be a key factor in the development of socialism

(Ferge, 1979).

Secondly, while educational policy, at least up to the 1970s, revealed a high level

of ideological motivation, Hungarian economic policy was characterised by a more

innovative pragmatism (Kornai, 1986). Some relaxation of the more extreme

rigours of a command economy already occurred in the wake of the 1956

uprising; and then in 1968 a series of reforms were introduced under the rubric of

the ‘New Economic Mechanism’, followed by further ‘liberalisation’ in 1979-1981.

Essentially, the reform process permitted, and even encouraged, a greater

responsiveness to market pressures on the part of the managements of state

enterprises and also entailed the formal recognition of small private sectors (for

example, in artisanal crafts, construction, and hotels and restaurants) where the

state was not able to ensure a politically acceptable supply of goods or services.

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In addition, an increasingly important ‘second economy’ was allowed to develop,

in agriculture, manufacturing and services alike, based largely on ‘moonlighting’

and family work. In consequence, Hungary became perhaps the most

economically successful country within the Soviet bloc, at all events from the

point of view of consumers (‘the best barracks in the laager’), although with

increased ‘marketisation’ inequality in earnings and household incomes rose

sharply above the previously restricted levels, especially during the 1980s

(Atkinson and Micklewright, 1998). In regard to employment, the effects of the

reform programme are more difficult to asses. Earlier restrictions on job changing

were relaxed and a relatively free labour market was created; but attempts at

planning education and training in relation to forecast labour demands continued

(Gabor, 1989). Throughout the socialist period entry into employment would

appear, for the majority of young people, to have followed on more or less

automatically from standardised qualifications obtained at the end of a primarily

vocational education (Bukodi and Róbert, 2006).3

Thirdly, after the regime change of 1989, Hungary achieved the transition from a

command to a market economy with less severe disruption and a greater eventual

improvement in macroeconomic performance than did most of the other countries

following a similar route. The ‘transformational recession’ (Kornai, 1994) of 1990-

93 was, in comparative perspective, fairly short, and from 1996 to 2000 annual

rates of growth of GDP were in excess of 4% - some of the highest in Europe.

Other economic and social indicators likewise point to what could be seen as

vigorous modernisation: for example, a sustained shift of the labour force from

both agriculture and manufacturing into services, increasing urbanisation,

expanding tertiary education, and a strong growth in professional and managerial

employment (Bukodi and Róbert, 2006). At the same time, though, the

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institutionalised full employment of the socialist era came to an end. In the new

labour market, rates of unemployment have fluctuated but the general level of

employment has remained low and the balance of economic power has

overwhelmingly favoured employers and their managements, with few limitations

being placed on their ability to hire and fire (Bukodi and Róbert, 2008a).

Furthermore, after regime change inequalities in earnings and incomes have

increased yet more strongly than under ‘reformed socialism’ (Kolosi and Róbert,

2004; Atkinson, 2008: Part III, section I). In short, the process of economic

development and modernisation that occurred in Hungary during the socialist era

has been continued, and in many respects accelerated, but now under the very

different conditions of liberal capitalism.

Given these features of the Hungarian case, we can then derive expectations from

the two arguments that we previously outlined - what we may label as the

‘meritocracy as functional imperative’ (MFI) argument and the ‘market versus

meritocracy’ (MVM) argument - that are of a clearly divergent kind. If we focus on

the positions of individuals within the class structure and on the role of

educational attainment in the transition between class origins and destinations,

we can spell out such expectations in regard to the ‘origins-education-

destinations’ (OED) triangle on the following lines.

(i) The association between class origins and educational attainment. Insofar as a

reduction in this association was achieved in the state socialist era through

policies directed specifically to this end, then, under the MFI argument, such a

reduction should be maintained as liberal capitalism takes over the modernisation

process or, at very least, should not to be reversed. Thus, in an analysis of

socioeconomic status attainment in Hungary, Luijkx et al. (2002: 134-5 and Table

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1 esp.) suggest that the socialist educational reforms have to be seen as generally

pushing in same direction as the - supposed - functional imperatives of

modernisation: that is, towards the more effective exploitation of human

resources wherever in society they may be located. From this standpoint,

therefore, there is little reason for this movement to be checked after the passing

of socialism. In contrast, under the MVM argument, there is no expectation that

any reduction in class differentials in educational attainment achieved via socialist

intervention should be sustained under liberal capitalism. And, indeed, the

importance of class background for children’s educational performance and

careers would be seen as likely to increase if, as in the Hungarian case, class

inequalities in incomes significantly widen and greater possibilities for the

expression of parental inequality in children’s education arise through the

development of secondary schools of both a more academically and socially

selective kind (Lannert, Mártonfi and Vágó, 2006).4

(ii) The association between educational attainment and class destinations.

Following from the MFI argument, the strong association established in socialist

Hungary between educational qualifications and class position should in general

be preserved and indeed further developed in response to the need for employers

to select employees on the basis of their educational attainments, whether taken

as warranting skills and expertise or as signalling productive potential. In this

respect again (cf. Luijkx et al. 2002), the socialist programme of creating an

education-based meritocracy, even if conceived within the context of a command

economy, would still appear entirely consistent with the functional requirements

of liberal capitalism. However, following the MVM argument, there is no

expectation that the strength of the association established in the socialist era

between educational qualifications and employment - and thus class position -

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should be maintained. Rather, in the transition from a command to a decentralised

market economy, this association should, if anything, weaken. Once the

educational system is no longer used as an instrument of manpower planning and

allocation, and employers are free to apply their own criteria in selecting

personnel, they will be likely to take into account a range of other attributes of

employees or potential employees than their formal qualifications - depending,

say, on the nature and context of the work involved.

(iii) The association between class origins and class destinations. Given the

expectations under the MFI argument, first, that the association between class

origins and educational attainment should not strengthen with regime change and,

second, that the association between educational attainment and class position

should not weaken, the further expectation would then be that, all else equal, no

increase should occur in the origins-destinations association. Indeed, insofar as

the movement towards an education-based meritocracy in socialist Hungary led to

a reduction in this association - or that is, to greater social fluidity - then with

liberal capitalism this tendency should continue. However, under the MVM

argument no expectation of such greater fluidity arises. In this respect, the

expected weakening of the association between education and class destinations

might offset a strengthening of that between class origins and education - or

might not. Crucial here would be how far the further criteria of social selection

that employers apply, in addition to that of educational attainment, are also ones

associated with individuals’ class backgrounds. In so far as they are, then a

stronger origins-destinations association could result or, that is, a decrease in

social fluidity.

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In the remainder of the paper, these divergent expectations concerning changing

associations within the OED triangle will be subject to empirical evaluation.

Data and variables

We use data from five surveys, based on face-to-face interviews with probability

samples of the Hungarian population: the Social Mobility and Life History Surveys

of 1973, 1983 and 1992, the 2000 Way of Life and Time Use Survey, and the

2005 EU-SILC module for Hungary.

We construct the three variables of major interest to us in the following ways.

Class origins are treated by coding basic data on respondent’s father’s occupation

and employment status, at respondent’s age 14, to an eight-class version of the

CASMIN class schema (Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992: ch. 2) as shown in Table

1. (On the applicability of this schema to communist and post-communist

societies, see Evans and Mills, 1999; Titma, Tuma and Roosma, 2003; Gerber

and Hout, 2004). Class destinations are treated by coding data on respondent’s

occupation and employment status to the same class categories.5 Educational

attainment is treated by coding data on respondent’s highest level of education to

a six-category variable, as also shown in Table 1.

[Table 1 here]

As the basis for our analyses, we pool the data of the five national surveys and

then distinguish within the pooled data seven ten-year birth-cohorts, as shown in

Table 2, whose members can be regarded as having significantly differing

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experience of the successive phases of Hungarian political and economic history

over the last century.6

[Table 2 here]

The first - i.e. the earliest - of these cohorts, comprising men and women born

1915-24, can be regarded as transitional in that it is made up of individuals who

completed at least their full-time education in the pre-socialist period and who, in

most cases, would also have some experience of employment in this period as

well as under socialism. The second cohort is also transitional in that many of its

members, too, would have completed their education before regime change,

although most of their working lives would then fall in the socialist era. The third

and fourth cohorts are then the truly socialist cohorts. Their members were

educated and would have spent at least substantial parts, if not all, of their

working lives under socialism. The fifth and sixth cohorts are again ones involved

in regime transition. Their members were educated in the socialist era but the

most of the fifth cohort and some of the sixth will have experienced working life

under both socialism and capitalism. And finally the seventh cohort, men and

women born 1975-84, can be taken, in regard to both education and

employment, as largely, if not entirely, representing the first generation of the

emergent capitalist society.

Class origins and educational attainment

We begin our analyses by considering possible changes over time in the

association between individuals’ class origins and their educational attainment as

measured by their highest level of qualification. In Table 3 we show the results

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we obtain if, for tables crossing origins with highest qualification for each of our

birth cohorts, we fit two loglinear models and a further logmultiplicative model

that are by now well-known in the relevant literature. As throughout the paper,

men and women are treated separately; but, in this case, the results show little

difference by gender.

[Table 3 here]

The first model, the independence model, proposes no association between class

origins and educational attainment and is obviously far from reproducing the data.

It serves us simply as a baseline. The second model, the constant association

(CA) model, then proposes that an origins-education (OE) association does exist

across the seven cohorts and is in fact of the same strength and on the same

pattern for all cohorts alike. This model also reveals a significant lack of fit to the

data, although, with both men and women, the proportion of cases misclassified

and G2 are substantially reduced. Finally, the uniform difference (UNIDIFF) model

(Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992) proposes that from one cohort to another the log

odds ratios defining the OE association rise or fall by a common factor - i.e. that

the strength of this association increases or decreases in a systematic way. This

model again fails to give a satisfactory fit, for either men or women, but in both

cases alike it does make a significant improvement on the fit of the CA model.7

We may thus conclude that while from cohort to cohort there are some changes

in the pattern of the OE association that the UNIDIFF model cannot capture, there

is also change in the overall strength of the association, and that the β parameters

returned under UNIDIFF model - i.e. the factors by which the log odds ratios

involved are to be multiplied - are therefore of interest. These parameters are

plotted in Figure 1.8

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[Figure 1 here]

Again, what we find is essentially the same for men and women. As between the

first and second cohorts a sharp fall in the strength of the OE association is

apparent, thus suggesting that some reduction in class differentials in educational

attainment was already achieved before the communist takeover (cf. Simkus and

Andorka, 1982). This is plausible since the main progressive achievement of the

quasi-fascist Horthy regime of 1920 to 1942 was a series of reforms of both

primary and secondary schooling (Cartledge, 2006: 376-7). However, it is also

important to note here that many men and women in these two cohorts - as in

later cohorts also - benefited from the extensive adult education programmes

introduced after 1947 to which we have earlier referred. Moreover, there are clear

indications that such programmes, which included both evening schools and

correspondence courses, were of greatest value to those individuals who, as

children, had no more than primary or basic vocational education - allowing them

to acquire in later life secondary and even tertiary vocational qualifications.9

Reverting to Figure 1, the decline in the OE association between the first and

second cohorts can then be seen to continue with men and women in the third

and fourth cohorts, whose education took place within the early socialist era.

However, with the fifth cohort, many of whose members would be educated

under the conditions of reformed socialism, a reversal of trend occurs: the OE

association strengthens. And this strengthening tendency is then maintained with

the sixth and, for men, with the seventh cohort also. Thus, for individuals who

were mainly educated under capitalism, the origins-education association is found

at around the same level as with the second cohort. Or, in other words, most of

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the reduction in class differentials in educational attainment that was achieved

during the earlier period of socialism disappears.

What, then, is the wider significance of these findings for the rival MFI and MVM

arguments that we earlier set out? We may note, first of all, that for the earlier

cohorts we distinguish, our findings parallel those earlier reported by Luijkx et al.

(2002) in their analyses of socioeconomic status attainment in Hungary: i.e. they

underwrite these authors’ conclusions that some decline in the correlation

between social origins and educational attainment was in train before the socialist

era and that this decline was then strongly continued under socialism.10 However,

while Luijkx et al., influenced by some version of the MFI argument, would regard

this continuing trend as the outcome of political influences simply reinforcing the

inherent exigencies of modernisation, our more extended analyses must throw

doubt on this interpretation. They reveal that the weakening of the OE association

was not in fact sustained even to the end of the socialist era, and that it was not

then re-established following the capitalist re-energising of the modernisation

process. This last point in particular would seem difficult reconcile with MFI

expectations.

In contrast, the failure of the OE association to continue to weaken once specific

political measures designed to achieve it lost their force or - like the quota system

- were withdrawn is very much what might be expected under the MVM

argument. And so too is the finding that later birth cohorts show in fact a

stronger OE association than those educated in the heyday of state socialism: that

is, in view of the widening of class inequalities that began already under reformed

socialism and that was intensified in the free labour market created after regime

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change and of the greater possibilities open to parents with superior resources to

use them to their children’s educational advantage.

Education and class destinations

We turn now to consider changes across our seven birth cohorts in the relation

between individuals’ educational attainment and their class destinations. An initial

issue is that of the point in individuals’ employment histories at which class

destinations should be established. Usually analysts have no choice but to work

with respondent’s ‘last’ class position - i.e. his or her class position at the time a

survey was undertaken - which means that individuals in different birth cohorts

will have their class destinations determined at correspondingly differing ages.

This can then create problems of interpretation. However, the Hungarian surveys

of 1973, 1983 and 1992 record respondents’ complete employment histories so

that it is possible to determine their class position at any age. We seek to take

advantage of this possibility and then to adapt appropriately our treatment of

respondents to the 2000 and 2005 surveys, for whom we can establish only their

last class position.

First, for men and women in our four earliest birth cohorts - i.e. those born

between 1915 and 1954 - we take as their destination class their class position

at age 32, as indicated in the employment histories of the 1973, 1983 and 1992

surveys. Second, for men and women in the three later cohorts we focus on

those in limited age-ranges at the time of the 1992, 2000 or 2005 surveys, so

that we can take as their destination class their last class position as recorded

when they were fairly close to age 32. Thus, destinations are established for

individuals in the fifth cohort (born 1955-64) from the 1992 survey at ages 28-

37; for those in the sixth cohort (born 1965-74) from the 2000 survey at ages

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28-35 and from the 2005 survey at ages 31-37; and for those in the seventh

cohort (born 1975-84) from the 2000 survey at age 25 and from the 2005 survey

at ages 25-30.11

In treating the relation between education and class destinations, we move to a

regression approach: that is, for each cohort separately, we take class of

destination as the dependent variable in a multinomial logistic regression analysis

in which educational qualifications and class origins are the explanatory variables.

For the purposes of this analysis, we collapse the two agricultural classes, Class

IVc and VIIb, with Class IVab and Class VIIa+IIIb, respectively, since in the later

cohorts numbers in the agricultural sector become rather small. Further, we treat

educational qualifications as a continuous variable, each level being scored by the

modal number of years of full-time education involved (as shown in Table 1); and

for respondents to the earlier surveys for whom we fix class of destination at age

32, we work with their highest level of qualification at this same age. We present

the results that are of main interest to us - i.e. the effects of education on class of

destination controlling for class origins - in graphical form. Those for men are

shown in the upper panel of Figure 2.

[Figure 2 here]

If education had no differentiating effect in regard to class of destination, then

with the form of presentation of Figure 2 the points for all classes would be piled

up together at zero, together with that for the reference class, Class I.

Conversely, the more these points are strung out to the left, the wider the range

of the effects of education. At the same time, the spacing of the points indicates

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the pattern of these effects. From Figure 3, the following conclusions may thus be

drawn.

Over the first three cohorts, the effects of education on men’s class positions, as

recorded mostly in the pre-reform socialist era, clearly increase. Widening ‘gaps’

emerge as between the chances of men being found in class positions associated

with white-collar employment (Classes I, II and III) rather than in those involving

manual work; and then again as between the chances of their being found in

skilled manual work (Classes IV and V-VI) rather than non-skilled manual work

(Class VII). However, with the fourth cohort, whose members’ class positions are

recorded under reformed socialism, this trend is maintained only in that the gap

created between the chances of obtaining skilled rather than non-skilled manual

work widens further. And then with the remaining cohorts, whose members’ class

destinations in their late twenties or early-to-mid thirties largely relate to the

capitalist era, this gap is much reduced, while no others increase, so that the

graph for the last cohort, men born 1975-80, is not greatly different from that for

the second cohort, men born 1925-34.

The lower panel of Figure 2 shows corresponding results for women. Some

differences with the results for men are apparent. The increasing effect of

education in relation to class destinations, though observable over the socialist

cohorts, is not so marked as with men but then can be seen to continue through

to the sixth cohort. However, this is mainly the result of education still strongly

differentiating the chances of women being found in manual (Classes V-VI and

VII) rather than nonmanual (Classes I,II and III) employment. The large gaps earlier

opened up in women’s chances of employment as between the nonmanual

classes do not continue to widen after the fifth cohort. And then with the last

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cohort the differentiating effects of education in general diminish. Again as with

men, the similarity between the graph for this cohort and that for the second

cohort is notable.12

The foregoing results might be regarded as inconsistent with those reported by

economists who have stressed the increasing importance of education - and

especially of higher education - as a means of gaining access to high-income

employment in Hungary following on regime change (e.g. Svejnar, 1999; Kertesi

and Köllö, 2007). To throw further light on this issue, we show in Figures 5 and

6 probabilities of access to Classes I and II of our schema, or, that is, to the

professional and managerial salariat, for certain categories of men and women

defined according to class origins and educational attainment. These probabilities

are estimated under a logistic regression model similar to that from which Figure 2

derives except that the form is now binomial - i.e. holding (or not) a position in

Classes I or II is the dependent variable - and interaction effects between the two

explanatory variables of class origins and qualifications are included and generally

prove significant if not large.13

[Figure 3 here]

In the case of men, Figure 3 shows that for those with tertiary qualifications, the

effects of their class origins on their chances of access to the salariat, while

perceptible in the first cohort, more or less disappear over the next four cohorts -

when, one could say, education-based meritocracy prevails - but then re-emerge

with the last two cohorts whose members’ class positions are mostly recorded

under capitalism. For men without tertiary qualifications, Figure 3 reveals that

class origins always play a greater part in their chances of access to the salariat,

22

even in the socialist era. But, again, while origin effects narrow somewhat down

to the fifth cohort, the last two cohorts show a reversal of this trend. Thus, one

may note that for men in the third, fourth and fifth cohorts, who would enter

employment under socialism, the probability of being found in the salariat for

those of non-salariat background holding tertiary qualifications exceeds that for

those of salariat background who lack such qualifications by as much as 70

percentage points - but that by the last, capitalist, cohort, this difference has

shrunk to only a little over 50 percentage points.

In the case of women, the results of Figure 3 display a fairly similar pattern to

that found with men, but with the effect of regime change - as in our previous

analyses in this section - being apparently ‘delayed’, though then quite strong.

Thus, for the last cohort, the difference in the probabilities of access to the

salariat as between women of non-salariat origins with tertiary qualifications and

women of salariat origins without such qualifications is only 35 percentage points,

as against one of 55-60 percentage points for women in the third, fourth and fifth

cohorts.14

On this basis, we may then conclude that even though earnings returns to higher

education have risen, the importance of class origins for entry into better-paid

forms of employment has also increased in the capitalist era - a conclusion that is

in fact confirmed by other recent research (see Blaskó and Róbert, 2007). Higher

education is the major factor governing access to professional and managerial

employment, just as under socialism. But we have earlier shown how the

association between class origins and educational attainment has strengthened,

and to this we can now add the observation that tertiary qualifications no longer

seem to produce more or less the same ‘class returns’ - nor in fact the same

23

earnings returns (Bukodi and Róbert, 2008b) - for individuals of all class origins

alike. The chances of entry into the salariat for individuals with tertiary

qualifications but from relatively disadvantaged class backgrounds would appear

to be declining, while the chances for individuals without such qualifications but

who are themselves of salariat background are improving.

The findings reported in this section do therefore serve to confirm those of the

earlier research to which we have referred (see n. 5) in showing that in Hungary,

under the conditions of a command economy, well-defined linkages were set in

place between educational qualifications and type and level of employment - so

that in fact the education-class (ED) association was stronger than typically found

in liberal capitalist societies. Our findings are also, to this extent, in line with

those of Luijkx et al. (2002) of a generally increasing correlation, through at least

to the period of reformed socialism, between individuals’ education and the

socioeconomic status of their first job on entry into the labour market. However,

consistently with the MFI argument, Luijkx et al. see socialist policies as being in

this regard supplementary in their effects to those of the underlying modernisation

process - just as in the case of the reduction they report in the correlation

between social origins and educational attainment. However, our own results, as

they extend into in the capitalist era in Hungary, again call into question this line

of interpretation. If it is a functional imperative of modern societies that

individuals’ class positions should be ever more closely related to their educational

qualifications, it is difficult to see why in Hungary, as the modernisation process

was continued and indeed accelerated under capitalism, the education-

employment linkages established in the socialist era should not have been further

strengthened - rather than the ED association tending in various respects to

24

weaken, while class origins take on renewed importance at least as regards

access to the salariat.15

In contrast, from the standpoint of the MVM argument, the pattern of change we

show is in no way surprising. It is what might be expected as employers gained

increasing freedom from the constraints of a command economy and were able to

apply their own criteria in their selection and personnel policies generally. In a free

market economy individuals’ qualifications, whatever their overall importance, will

still represent only one consideration for employers among a range of others - to

which differing weights will then tend to be given in regard to different types of

employment in different sectors and enterprises. And among these other

considerations are likely to be ones relating to individual attributes of a kind less

likely to be acquired in schools or colleges than through class-specific processes

of socialisation: for example, personal physical or psychological attributes, social

skills, life-style characteristics and social networks. Even though scarcely

reflecting merit in any sense, such attributes may still have real productive value

for employers, as for example, in the expanding services sector of the economy,

or may at all events be increasingly taken by employers as providing informative

signals of the productive potential of employees in the context of the rising

numbers of those who hold higher-level qualifications (see further on the

Hungarian case Blaskó and Róbert, 2007 and, more generally, Bowles and Gintis,

2000, Jackson, Goldthorpe and Mills, 2004; Osborne Groves, 2005; Jackson,

2006, 2007).

Class origins and class destinations

25

For our evaluation of the MFI and MVM arguments, it is the nature of change in

the OE and ED associations that is of most obvious importance since quite

contradictory expectations arise. However, it is also of interest to consider the

origins-destinations (OD) association, even though in this respect it may be

somewhat less easy to discriminate between the two arguments. As earlier noted,

from the standpoint of education-based meritocracy as a functional imperative,

there is no reason why regime change in Hungary should lead to any

strengthening in the OD association, nor why, if any weakening in this association

was achieved under socialism, it should not continue under capitalism. But, from

the standpoint of ‘market versus meritocracy’, a strengthening in the OD

association is at all events a possibility: that is, if the expected increase in the OE

association is not offset by the expected decrease in the ED association in that

other factors that become important in influencing class destinations are at least

as closely linked to class origins as is educational attainment.

To investigate change in the OD association across our seven birth cohorts, we

revert to a loglinear modelling approach, directly analogous to that we followed in

regard to the OE association. In Table 4 we show the results of fitting the

independence model, the constant association - or, in this case, constant social

fluidity (CSF) - model and the UNIDIFF model to 8 x 8 class mobility tables for

each cohort for men and women separately. We treat class destinations in two

ways: as determined at around age 32, as in the previous section, but also, since

this is the more usual procedure even in cohort analyses, as determined at time of

interview in different surveys.

[Table 4 here]

26

In the following, we focus our attention on the results relating to class of

destination at c. age 32, but it can be seen that those relating to class of

destination at time of interview show much the same picture. For men and

women alike, the CSF model fails to fit the data, but the UNIDIFF model, while

also failing to fit, makes a significant improvement on the CSF model. We would

therefore conclude that although the UNIDIFF model cannot capture all aspects of

change in the OD association across our cohorts, shifts in the overall strength of

this association do occur, and these we then indicate through the plots of the �

parameters in Figure 4.

[Figure 4 here]

Here again it can be seen that our results are on similar lines with both ways of

treating class destinations, although, as might be expected, using class at time of

interview tends to ‘smooth’ the sharper changes that show up using class at c.

age 32. In the case of men, the strength of the OD association falls substantially

over the first four cohorts, levels out with the fifth, and then rises again with the

sixth and seventh. In the case of women, the same kind of curve is apparent,

although the levelling-out starts somewhat earlier, with the fourth cohort, while a

clear upturn appears only with the seventh. In other words, cohorts entering

employment and establishing their class positions in the earlier period of state

socialism in Hungary did so under conditions of increasing fluidity within the class

structure, which, in the light of our earlier analyses, it seems plausible to link with

the development of a form of education-based meritocracy involving a weakening

in the OE association and a strengthening in the ED association. However, to

judge from the experience of later cohorts, the level of fluidity tends to stabilise

27

already in the period of reformed socialism and then, with the transition to

capitalism, and with the reversal of trend in the OE and ED associations that we

have shown, a reversal occurs in the OD association also: fluidity within the class

structure decreases (cf. Róbert and Bukodi, 2004).16

As it turns out, then, our analysis of change in the OD association does allow us

to say more as regards the evaluation of the MFI and MVM arguments. In

particular, the MFI argument must be further called into question by the

strengthening of the OD association that is found with the two most recent

cohorts. If it were the case that the socialist version of education-based

meritocracy created in Hungary after 1949 served simply to meet exigencies of

the modernisation process that, under any political regime, would sooner or later

have imposed themselves, it is difficult to see why, as the modernisation of

Hungarian society proceeded under capitalism, this meritocracy and the higher

levels of social fluidity that it evidently generated should not have been

maintained. On the other hand, under the MVM argument, the observed decrease

in social fluidity, while not necessarily predicted, is in no way problematic, and

might indeed be expected given the rise in economic inequality that began in the

period of reformed socialism and that was then accentuated once capitalism was

established.17

Conclusions

In this paper, we have taken the case of Hungary as a critical one for assessing

empirically two arguments on meritocracy which we have labelled as the MFI and

MVM arguments. The MFI argument treats a movement towards meritocracy -

28

and essentially education-based meritocracy - as a functional imperative for all

modern societies. It thus sees no incompatibility between such meritocracy and

the social order of free-market capitalism. Indeed, in the context, first, of

American cold-war liberalism and now widely in centre-left and centre-right

politics in Europe, the main appeal of the idea of education-based meritocracy is

found in its potential for legitimating the inequalities of income, wealth and status

that free-market capitalism generates. The main significance of the MVM

argument is, then, that it directly challenges this position. It seeks to show, from

the standpoint of classic European liberalism, the incompatibilities that must arise

between the political creation of a meritocracy and the operation of a free-market

economy and a truly free society. As regards an education-based meritocracy,

these incompatibilities are revealed, on the one hand, in attempts to remove the

influence of class (or other sociocultural) background factors on children’s

educational performance and careers; and, on the other hand, in attempts to make

educational attainment the overriding determinant of the type and level of

employment, and thus of the class positions, to which individuals gain access. At

least beyond a certain point, such attempts can be pursued only at cost of

unacceptable curtailments of the freedom of parents and of employers alike.

A case such as that of Hungary is critical in that a transition has occurred, over a

fairly short period, from state socialism, under which a form of education-based

meritocracy was relatively highly developed, to a new liberal capitalist society. On

the evidence of the socialist era alone, one cannot reach any decisive evaluation

of the two arguments that concern us, although they lead to interpretations of

this evidence of quite differing kinds. In the light of the MFI argument, the efforts

of the regime to create an education-based meritocracy can be seen as simply one

way of responding to the functional imperatives of modernisation; whereas, in the

29

light of the MVM argument, these efforts would appear, rather, as part of a larger

ideologically-driven programme aimed at creating quite distinctive forms of

economy and society. However, with the transition to capitalism, the two

arguments give rise to clearly divergent expectations. Following the MFI

argument, there would seem no reason why the movement towards meritocracy

achieved in the socialist era should not be sustained as the modernisation process

continues and is in fact revitalised under capitalism. But, following the MVM

argument, this movement should be checked, if not reversed, as the

incompatibilities between meritocracy and the operation of a liberal capitalist

society are demonstrated.

We have then sought to evaluate these rival expectations on the basis of the

extensive data that are available for Hungary on the relation between individuals’

class origins, their educational attainment and their class destinations - the OED

triangle - over the period of interest to us. Through analyses of the changing

experience of seven ten-year birth cohorts, ranging from men and women born

1915-24 to those born 1975-84, we have shown that it is in general expectations

under the MVM rather than under the MFI argument that are empirically

confirmed. First, the weakening in the OE association that occurred with cohorts

educated during the earlier years of state socialism is reversed already with those

educated during the reform period, at the same time as market mechanisms came

to play a greater role in the economy and class inequalities in incomes increased;

and the strengthening OE association is then sustained with cohorts educated

chiefly under capitalism, as class inequalities became yet wider and greater

possibilities emerged for them to be reflected in children’s education. Second, the

tight linkages between employment and education that were created under early

state socialism were in certain respects loosened from the reform period onwards,

30

so that with our last, capitalist cohort the ED association has clearly weakened;

and, at least as regards chances of access to the professional and managerial

salariat, the influence of individuals’ class origins, in addition to and in interaction

with their qualifications, significantly increases. Thirdly, we have shown that the

weakening in the OD association which is apparent across those cohorts whose

education and early working lives fell within the prime years of the state socialist

meritocracy was not maintained with subsequent cohorts, and that again in fact a

reversal occurs.

These results do, then, have implications for the significance that should attach to

other recent research findings relevant to the OED triangle. In the case of the

weakening in the ED association, it may be noted that this is not in fact a finding

specific to Hungary or other formerly socialist societies that have made the

transition to capitalism but rather one that is now quite widely observed (Breen

and Luijkx, 2004) - with evident problems for the MFI argument (cf. Jonsson,

1992, 1996; Jackson, Goldthorpe and Mills, 2004). In the case of the OE and OD

associations, in contrast, our results for Hungary do run contrary to those

suggesting that in the later twentieth century the most common tendency in

modern societies is for both these associations also to weaken - gradually but

steadily, and thus consistently with the MFI argument. However, it should further

be noted that the researchers chiefly responsible for the work in question (Breen

and Luijkx, 2004; Breen et al., forthcoming) do not seek to represent their

findings as necessarily supporting the MFI argument - rather than, say, reflecting

the specificities of a particular historical period, so that, within a longer-term

view, they could be equally consistent with ideas of ‘trendless fluctuation’

(Sorokin, 1927/1959) in inequalities of condition and opportunity alike. In the light

of our own results, this caution would seem well founded. Analysis of the

31

Hungarian case undermines the idea that progressive movement towards an

education-based meritocracy is a functional imperative of all modern societies,

regardless of the form of their economic and political institutions, and indeed two

quite contrary conclusions are indicated. First, such movement, at least beyond a

certain point, requires political intervention in the economy and wider society of

questionable compatibility with a free market economy and a liberal democracy.

And, second, within a liberal capitalist context, there is little reason why the

operation of markets should serve to promote education-based meritocracy rather

than setting limits both on the extent to which the influence of class background

on individuals’ educational attainment can be reduced and on the extent to which

such attainment can then determine their distribution within the class structure.

32

Notes

1 Solga (2006), in discussing East Germany, regards the importance of party

membership for access to more advantaged class positions as being incompatible

with education-based meritocracy and sees this as emerging only after

reunification. However, she recognises the special nature of the East German case

and even then (2006: 156) the extent to which - to her surprise - class

restructuring did in fact occur on the basis of ‘skill assets’ rather than ‘political

loyalty to the command system’. Other authors (e.g. Szelényi, 1998: ch. 5;

Titma, Tuma and Roosma, 2003; Gerber and Hout, 2004) note the quite limited

extent to which party membership or nomenklatura status, as opposed to

educational attainment, influence intra- or intergenerational mobility chances in

the state socialist societies they study.

2 The extent of the reduction achieved in class differentials in educational

attainment has been a good deal debated, and not least in the Hungarian case

(see e.g. Simkus and Andorka, 1982; Róbert, 1991; Szelényi and Aschaffenburg,

1993; Hanley and McKeever, 1997; Szelényi, 1998). However, there is much

greater consensus on the creation of strong qualifications-employment linkages

(see e.g. Andorka, 1976; Pohoski, Pöntinen and Zagórski, 1978; Meyer, Tuma

and Zagórski, 1979; Zagórski, 1984; Mach and Peschar, 1990; Solga and

Konietzka, 1999).

3 It is relevant to note here that the educational system of pre-communist Hungary

was already strongly influenced by the Germanic model, with well-defined

vocational ‘tracks’ at both secondary and tertiary levels providing a high degree of

integration with the labour market (Simkus and Andorka, 1982).

33

4 From the 1990s a major development in secondary education in Hungary has

been the growth of a new type of ‘structure-changing’ gymnasium which appears

to be widely regarded by parents and children as providing a better route into

tertiary - and especially university - education than secondary vocational

education, which has in turn declined in popularity (Fazekas and Varga, 2005;

Lannert, 2005).

5 Where at time of interview respondents were unemployed, retired or otherwise

inactive, their class allocation was based on their last employment.

6 Within each birth cohort, we include in our analyses all individuals aged 20 and

over at time of interview - i.e. in one or other of the five surveys we draw on - but

with a cut-off at age 69.

7 The lack of fit is scarcely surprising given the large Ns involved.

8 There are some dangers in estimating � parameters under the UNIDIFF model

where it does not fit the data since in this case they may be influenced by

marginal effects (Firth, 2005). However, in this - as in other similar cases in the

paper - the fit of the model, as indicated by the other statistics presented, would

seem good enough for the danger not to be a major one at least insofar as

emphasis is placed on the general pattern revealed by the parameters.

9 It may be noted that Breen et al. (forthcoming) in a comparative study of

changes in class differentials in educational attainment, question the quality of

some of the Hungarian data that we here use primarily on the grounds that the

qualifications distributions of men and women in the same birth cohorts show

significant differences from survey to survey. However, their assumption that

34

qualifications tend not to be enhanced in later life does not appear valid for the

Hungarian case. The changes that appear in educational attainment within cohorts

across surveys - i.e. as cohorts age - can be shown to have clear systematic

features on the lines indicated in the text. That is, the proportion of individuals

with only primary or basic vocational education regularly falls while the proportion

with secondary or tertiary vocational - but not academic - qualifications

correspondingly rises. (Results are available from the authors on request). Given

the expansion of provision for adult education, it would seem reasonable to regard

these changes as being largely real rather than merely representing error. It is then

possible that changes could in turn occur in the association between class origins

and educational attainment within birth cohorts across surveys, and the nature of

this effect might perhaps itself differ across cohorts as the uses made of adult

education change (cf. Bukodi and Róbert, 2008a). But, in any event, on the basis

of the more extensive Hungarian data-set that we have available and using

somewhat more refined class and educational categories than Breen et al., we

further find that what they would regard as the minimally acceptable model from

the point of view of data quality does in fact fit the data we use for men and

women alike: i.e. a model in which the origins-education association is allowed to

differ within cohorts across surveys but in which the survey effect is the same for

all cohorts. (Results are again available on request).

10 Luijkx et al. use the same 1973, 1983 and 1992 surveys as do we but

supplemented by a further survey from 1993 undertaken in the context of a

comparative study of social stratification in eastern Europe after 1989.

11 There is good evidence for supposing that the rate at which changes in

employment lead also to changes in class position falls off rather sharply after

35

around age 35. We chose the slightly lower age of 32 as that at which we would

fix class of destination for individuals in cohorts for whom we could draw on

complete employment history data since this age could be more readily

approximated with individuals in the more recent cohorts for whom we have to

rely on class at time of interview. Our procedure with the latter does of course

result in a significant loss of cases, the extent of which can be seen by comparing

the Ns reported in Table 2 and Figure 2.

12 As a check on the results of Figure 2 we have undertaken an analysis of the

pooled data with birth cohort as a variable and have then examined

cohort*education interactions. For both men and women, these prove to be

significant on a pattern consistent with the interpretation of Figure 2 given in the

text.

13 Most notably, the association between educational attainment and class

destinations was stronger for men and women of Class IV (largely peasant) and

Class VII origins than for those of Class I or II origins.

14 The numbers of men and women represented in our youngest cohort do

become relatively small in these analyses. However, it is reassuring that the

results we report for this cohort are broadly confirmed by those obtained in

analyses of a larger ‘capitalist’ cohort - i.e. men and women born 1975-90 -

although on the basis of somewhat lower quality data than we use here (Bukodi

and Róbert, 2000b).

15 It might of course be argued that under classic socialism educational

requirements for different forms of employment were no more than

‘credentialism’, and this seems to be the line taken by Luijkx et al. (2002: 132-3)

36

in explaining why they actually find some fall in the correlation between education

and first job under reformed socialism - contrary to the expectation that greater

marketisation should bring an increased return to educational investment.

However, while this argument obviously has force in the case of, say, the

diplomas in Marxist-Leninism that certain party and state officials were pressed to

obtain (Eyal, Szelényi and Townsley, 1998: 27,36), education-based meritocracy

must always be prone to some degree of credentialism (cf. Collins, 1979) and we

are not aware of any evidence to show that this problem was generally more

marked in state socialist than in liberal capitalist societies.

16 It can be seen from Figures 1,2 and 4 that with men, the trend in both the OE

and ED associations reverses between the fourth and fifth cohorts while the OD

association levels out at this point before then strengthening. With women, the

reversal in trend in the OE association also occurs between the fourth and fifth

cohorts but that in the ED and again in the OD association occurs only between

the sixth and seventh cohorts. We do not as yet have any explanation for these

differences but hope to investigate the matter further.

17 Gerber and Hout (2004) have demonstrated a decline in fluidity within the

Russian class structure in the transition from state socialism to a more market-

based economy which might seem comparable to the Hungarian case that we

have analysed. However, Gerber and Hout further show that this decline came

about essentially as a ‘period’ rather than as a ‘cohort replacement’ effect and

via the mechanism of ‘regression towards origins’ in the course of worklife

mobility. Following a similar line of analysis (results available on request), we find

that as regards the changes we have shown in both the ED and OD associations,

the preferred model is one that includes both effects, although cohort effects

37

seem generally the more important. This result we find unsurprising given that the

transition from a command to a market economy was far less abrupt and the

‘transformational recession’ far less severe in Hungary than in Russia.

38

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